1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to printing systems, and in particular, to a system and method for printing queued print jobs, e.g., printing queued print jobs on shared network printers such that the number of banner or identification sheets used to identify the printed jobs may be reduced.
2. Background of Related Art
Modern computing environments include multiple computer devices which are networked (e.g., personal computers, printing systems, scanner, faxes and the like). For example, several computers may be linked together via a LAN utilizing TCP/IP and/or other protocols. Additionally, the LAN environment may include servers for controlling access to the LAN by utilizing authentication and verification systems. Printing may be centrally located for convenience to the users logged onto the system. These centrally located printing systems enable the LAN administrators to buy a high-volume, high-speed printing system thereby resulting in lower per-page printing costs. The word “printing system” as used herein encompasses any apparatus, such as a digital copier, printer, bookmaking machine, facsimile machine, multi-function machine, etc. which performs a print outputting function for any purpose.
Some LAN configurations are very large in size and can span several physically separated spaces. Some of these large networked systems are commonly referred to as WANs (“Wide Area Network”). WANs are similar to LANs, however, WANs generally have multiple physical locations in several metropolitan, regional or national locations. Because of the large scale of some of these networks, several printing system are sometimes located in a single location and/or groups of printing systems are located in physically separate localities. For example, a college campus may include computer labs for students and computer labs for faculty members. Each of these locations may include one or more printing systems. Additionally, in this example, a printing system may be located in an adjacent building where some faculty members are located or where additional classes are held.
Because of the various locations that media may be printed within a network, print drivers generally give the user the option of where to print. Print drivers sometimes perform some processing on the print data for printing and thereafter transfer the processed print data from the personal computer to a print queue. Additionally or alternatively, the print driver may include an internal print queue.
Often several users attempt to print to the same printing system at about the same time. Print jobs are usually queued within a print queue and printed in a first-in first-out fashion. Each print job is commonly printed with a cover sheet indicating either the user's name and/or the print name of the document being printed. The cover sheet is usually one printed sheet having the same size and dimensions of the media used for printing the document itself. The cover sheet (or more generally “identification sheet”) and print job are either printed immediately from the networked computer and/or are held at the printing system until a user “releases” the print job. Some current print drivers allow users to set a specific print time for a single job that they submit. This allows a very large print job to be printed after normal working hours, for example, but still requires an “identification sheet” for each job submitted.